Monday

Earlier in this series, an astute reader admonished the Love Team for saluting Sarasota’s John Ringling Bridge.

He pointed out that it is a structure, not a building. Buildings, by definition, have floors, walls and roofs. And although the bridge’s many concrete segments all have walls, floors and roofs (motorists drive on the latter), we agree that it is, in design and usage, a structure.

A similar scenario exists this week. The walkway that surrounds Lake Mirror in downtown Lakeland does have some chambers in the west-side loggia, but, again, it is better described as a structure.

But what a structure! A lot of cities have waterfront walkways, but Lakeland’s might be the most dramatic in Florida.

The brainchild of Lakeland business leader Thomas J. Appleyard, it was designed in 1926 by Charles Wellford Leavitt, a civil engineer, urban planner and pioneering landscape architect from New York. He built baseball’s Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, worked on Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York, and was employed by families with such prominent names as Chrysler, Dodge, Rockefeller and Schwab (Charles). He was a champion of the City Beautiful movement, and the Lake Mirror Promenade was a shining example of contemporary urban planning.

The promenade was not completed until 1928, which was the same year Leavitt died, at 57, of pneumonia. (It is not uncommon to find such sad stories on the FBIL list. One example: Architect Milton Medary’s Bok Singing Tower was finished in Lake Wales in 1929, the same year Medary won the AIA Gold Medal and also passed away; Edward Bok died less than a year after the dedication of his tower and gardens. Three years earlier, circus owner Charles Ringling died just six months after his “Building I Love” mansion, now College Hall at New College in Sarasota, was completed.)

The promenade has a beautiful balustrade with streetlamps around the half-mile perimeter of the small, oval-shaped lake, but it is on the west side that the visual delight reaches its peak. A large platform that steps down to the water’s edge is guarded by two monumental Corinthian columns. A loggia with five arches, aligning with the terminus of East Main Street, is the central feature of a 540-foot-long retaining wall that is set against the tall lake bank.

The promenade was a feat of engineering, as it was built into the lake. New banks were dug around the shore to create space from which water could be pumped and a wooden superstructure erected to support the concrete walkway.

In 1946, the structure was named after Frances Langford (1913-2005), who grew up near Lakeland. FBIL’s more experienced readers will remember her successful Hollywood movie and radio singing career (“I’ll Be Seeing You,” “I’m in the Mood for Love”), which stretched from the 1930s to the 1950s. But she never forgot her roots in Lakeland, and the community was eager to honor her for her work with the USO, entertaining the troops with Bob Hope during World War II, and her visits to military hospitals. Her weekly newspaper column, “Purple Heart Diary,” told of those visits and urged public support for injured soldiers.

By the 1970s, the same thing had happened to the promenade as happened to a lot of 1920s boomtime structures: Although “generally in good condition,” according to its 1982 National Register nomination, it had fallen into some disrepair. The community rallied to the preservation cause, and about $735,000 was spent on restoration. By 1987, the work was done and the structure had been added to the National Register of Historic Places, in 1983, as the “Lake Mirror Promenade.”

As for Ms. Langford, the plaque with which she was honored disappeared from the site. It was not until 2013 that, after a campaign by historically minded Lakelanders, her name was returned to the site.

“Ms. Langford appeared on stage for tens of thousands of men and women serving our country in three different wars,” wrote retired Air Force Col. Gary Clark in a 2013 letter that was quoted in The Ledger newspaper. “Those of us who served will never forget her commitment and passion for American servicemen and women.”

The new plaque has a quote from Langford: “The greatest thing in my life was entertaining the troops.”

You do that, and your hometown names a landmark structure in your honor.

“Florida Buildings I Love” is a weekly homage to the state’s built environment. The author presents fee-based PowerPoint lectures on architecture and Florida development history to civic groups and neighborhood associations. E-mail: Harold.Bubil@heraldtribune.com.

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